Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  Simon took off his socks and discarded his underwear, feeling idiotic. He told himself that the price of admission to polite society might be too high, but there he was, following orders. It surprised him to learn that enough of him wanted in to take such crap from a collection of card-carrying jerkoffs. The next question was, What kind of prick did that make Simon Apple? “Seig heil,” he said. “Now you want me to do a tap dance?”

  “Toss your stuff off the stage,” Essman said.

  Simon threw his clothes and shoes at a front row seat. He saw a figure wearing a hood over his head emerge from the gloom, harvest his stuff and run up the nearest aisle.

  “Okay,” Simon thought, “if this is what it takes to become an Assassin, then this is what it takes.” Simon was sure if he made the final cut his life at Glenda Middle School would change for the better. The rewards were obvious. Eternal respect and admiration. Even Placebo would be impressed. If The Assassins told him to tattoo the Mona Lisa on the tip of his dick he would get it done.

  Simon saw the one who grabbed his clothes stop, dump them into a pile, pour a bottle of some kind of liquid over them, light a match and set his belongings on fire. “Holy shit,” Simon said, watching the flames flare, “enough is enough. Put out that damn fire.”

  The naked Simon had a harder time climbing down the dragon backs than he’d had getting up. His clumsy descent was helped by hands pulling him off the stage, lifting him into the air, then slamming him down with his face pressed against a bed of splinters.

  “Listen with both ears,” Essman said. “We’re going to show you what we do to commie beatniks with Mohawk hair. We don’t want your kind puking on America.”

  “I get it,” Simon said, “this is part of my initiation. Fine. But you know, Assman, the truth is, I’m not a hundred percent sure I want to be an Assassin. I do and I don’t. I know that might sound too complicated for you but it’s where I’m at right now. I’ll go along for the time being but I can’t promise you anything.”

  “Did I hear right?” Essman said. “He’s not sure he wants to be an Assassin?” Simon was flipped over and punched in the belly. “You’re breaking our hearts,” Essman said. Simon was kicked in the groin and smacked in the face. “I want to apologize if we disappointed you, Apple Core,” Essman said. Simon’s skull was whacked with a paddle. “Did you really think you could ever be one of us? You’re not one of us, freak. You belong somewhere in outer space.” They gave Simon a shampoo with pink paint and saved some for his pubes.

  “Is this or is it not part of a ritual?” Simon said. “You’ve got me confused, Essman. If it’s the first, I’m still in the game. If it’s the second, I’ll kill you.”

  “You’re scaring me,” Essman said. “I’m shaking like a leaf. I always thought you were a weirdo. But you’re not. You’re completely nuts.” Simon took a chop on the back of his neck and blacked out.

  When he woke, Simon sensed that The Assassins were gone. He stood, dripping blood and pink paint, and checked out what was left of his clothes. The only things recognizable were the rubber soles of his sneakers. He gazed at the smoldering embers of his shorts, socks, pants and Free Lenny Bruce T-shirt, still holding on to the possibility that he’d passed The Assassin’s test, that they’d teach him their secret handshake on Monday morning along with other secrets of the brotherhood. But he had to admit it could be wishful thinking.

  Simon covered his privates with his hands and left the Lombard. When he passed the ticket booth, Crazy Henry had his face pressed against the cashier’s hole. “Do you have a pickle?” Crazy Henry said. Simon accepted that it was a serious question, and shook his head no and apologized.

  He had no memory of how he got back to Quikpix. The next thing he knew, he was in his bed at home with Robert J. and Dr. Fikel looming over him. “I might get a club jacket,” Simon said between gasps. “Silky. With my name on it.”

  “Who did this to you, kid?” Robert J. said.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Simon said, clinging to The Assassins’ code.

  His father looked relieved. Revenge was not Robert J.’s forte.

  “I see no signs of permanent damage,” Dr. Fikel said. “But there does appear to be some respiratory difficulty. Give him an aspirin every four hours. And plenty of liquids. Get that pink dye off him as soon as possible. Let me know how he’s doing.”

  Simon woke in the middle of the night, his throat burning with thirst. He drained the water glass near his bed and ran to the bathroom for a refill. He swallowed that glassful and another. Between drinks, he gulped for air.

  Following a powerful urge, he filled the bathtub and bent over, drinking like a horse. With his head dipped under water his breathing came easier. He thought about his ordeal. Taking a beating was one thing. Facing the facts about his repulsive acquiescence was worse. The desire to belong, the horror of loneliness, had leached every ounce of whatever dignity he once had.

  Along with his clothing, The Assassins had stripped him clean of identity. Simon had nothing to hang onto, no territory left to protect, no way to define himself. He looked in the mirror on the medicine chest. His pale, swollen face was clown-like under the pink halo of hair. Oddly, he felt no antagonism toward Albert Essman, not even the desire to inflict pain. The only feeling he could find was a faraway sadness. Simon was outside the normal pull of gravity. When his chest tightened again, Simon got back into the bathtub. Robert J. found him submerged, a trail of bubbles rising from his nose and mouth. When the paramedics came they plugged him to an oxygen tank and rushed him to Glenda Memorial Hospital.

  After a hundred tests and re-tests, all negative, Dr. Fikel blamed stress for Simon’s asthmatic attacks. When he was left alone, the patient disconnected himself from the oxygen supply and dunked his face in the sink.

  While Dr. Fikel arranged for a visit from a psychiatrist, an alert nurse noticed an unusual pattern of striping under Simon’s chin and behind his ears. There were more consultations with specialists and more tests before Dr. Fikel had a new diagnosis.

  “What is it?” Robert J. said.

  “He’s growing gills,” Dr. Fikel said. “He’s becoming amphibious.”

  “That’s outlandish,” Robert J. said.

  “But not without some precedent.” Dr. Fikel squeezed his temples with his hands, pressing his brain for a memory. “Years ago I read a paper by an eminent endocrinologist,” Fikel said. “He suspected something like this might happen. Ictopera Aqueous Resperacion. His findings were debunked, though. I recall the article by Regis Van Clay in The Lancet. That whistleblower was sued up the kazoo by Regis Pharmaceuticals and then countersued claiming evidence of genetic alteration caused by prolonged use of Viloxidril by patients with a Middle European heritage. I forget who won that case.”

  “My wife’s maternal grandmother was from Latvia,” Robert J. said.

  “Bingo,” Dr. Fikel said.

  25

  “I have mixed feelings about inflicting the death penalty,” Judge Adolph Luber said. The elderly judge stood with perfect posture, his own distinguished statue. He carefully avoided Simon’s eyes while he opened a heart-shaped box. “Try some of the Godiva. It was given to me by my daughter last Valentine’s Day but it’s still fresh.” The judge reached into the box of candy and chose what Simon knew was a caramel.

  “No, thanks, Your Honor. Not right now.”

  “Watching your cholesterol, are you? Go ahead, give yourself a treat.”

  After all his years, teetering on the ledge of mortality, Simon finally learned how to lift the chocolate veil and intuit which candy was what. He wondered if the makers of those confections took any pleasure in disguising their content; sometimes the identical shape and wrapping might hide nougat, fruit, mocha, cream, something chewy or crunchy. Simon picked a nut, exactly what he wanted.

  While he chewed, he thought about the tidbits of valuable knowledge he would take to his grave. Then he remembered he’d chosen cremation. All his wisdom, si
gnificant and trivial, would translate into the calligraphy of smoke.

  When they’d asked Simon what he wanted done with his ashes he requested that they be scattered anyplace but the sea. Burial at sea was already a cliché, overused and over praised by too many second-rate poets. When they insisted he be more specific, Simon refused. He didn’t want to know his “final resting place”—their phrase—until he got there.

  “Are you with me?” Judge Luber said. “Your mind seems to be wandering. Do they have you on tranquilizers?”

  “No such solace. I’m not allowed any drugs.”

  “Of course. I forgot. As I was saying, Adolph Luber is no friend of capital punishment. It isn’t the principle of the thing. Certain crimes, like your misdeeds, are so offensive that any alternative to the most basic and brutal revenge curdles the fiber of a civilized society. Justice is sometimes a blood sport.”

  “So I noticed, Your Honor,” Simon said.

  “And my stance isn’t based on the DNA business just because it might prove some poor bastard was falsely convicted and dispatched. What bothers me are the methods we employ to do the job these days. When our forebears lopped off heads while thousands cheered or hanged the guilty at public carnivals, you had what I call real closure. Even the electric chair had merit. You could identify with a high voltage bolt shot through the skull and up the ass. Witnesses used to talk about the hum of current like it was a popular tune. All the lights in town blinked when they threw the switch.

  “Now the whole process is sanitized. It’s like bombing villages from 50,000 feet. Cyanide gas. A hiss, a whisper, fini . Lethal injection. It even sounds genteel. We tuck in the bastards, no offense meant, Simon. We practically sing them lullabies. To my mind that’s cruel and unusual punishment for the average Joe. And Jane. Let’s not forget Jane. You forget Jane, you get sued nowadays. And the endless delays between passing sentence and finally seeing the turds squirm and die. It’s not only shameful, it’s expensive.”

  “I don’t envy your job,” Simon said.

  “I try to do my best. Cases like yours are the worst. We condemn murderers, yet our society permits you to order the violent death of a crustacean. Ironic. Are you still having lobster tonight?”

  “Yes, I am having lobster and I can’t think of anything I’ve done to justify what you people are doing to me in the name of justice. It would have been so much quicker and cleaner if you’d brought in a hitman and not involved the courts. Is that what’s giving you last minute pangs of conscience? Confusing justice with gross national product?”

  “Pangs of conscience?” Judge Luber said.

  “Isn’t that why you’re here? Looking for absolution?”

  “Absolution? There was never any question about your sentence. You know damn well you had to die. What bothers me is that the process, the whole charade, was so predictable. I had to come to court every day, listen to those idiot lawyers argue, wait for the noodnik jury to make up its mind, deliver that self-righteous speech before I closed the book on you. No suspense, no tension, nothing to hold my interest. You recall those endless notes I seemed to take? I was doing crossword puzzles.”

  “I never finished a crossword puzzle in my life,” Simon said.

  “They help pass the time,” the judge said. “I just wanted you to know, Apple, that it wasn’t a walk in the park for me.”

  “I accept that,” Simon said. “And if it matters, your remarks before passing sentence were very apt and well put. About how my brutality shocked and horrified the nation. You almost had me believing you.”

  “Really? Well, thank you. Did you know in England the judge wears a black cloth over his wig when a death sentence is pronounced?”

  “It’s a nice custom,” Simon said. “Very theatrical.”

  “Ultimately humanizing,” Judge Luber said, biting into what Simon knew was a cherry floating in syrup. “I hope you get some satisfaction from knowing how many people you’ll be helping tonight. Apple, you should be proud to be part of this seminal event. Any misgivings aside, I know I am.”

  “Proud as punch, Your Honor,” Simon said, reaching for a nougat.

  26

  Simon Apple’s gills replaced his lungs as the principal agents of respiration; except for brief periods, he could only breathe under water.

  After many sessions with psychotherapists given the task of helping Simon accept what they euphemistically described as his “handicap,” and following endless consultations with technicians whose specialty was assisting the patient to survive outside the hospital, Simon made reasonable progress.

  He was rigged with a specially designed bell jar that fit over his head and rested on his shoulders. Two converted scuba tanks strapped to his back pumped a steady supply of filtered liquid, highly oxygenated, up to Simon’s heavy jug. Earphones attached to a box on his chest allowed him hear. He learned to speak through a microphone that amplified his words and screened out the sound of the bubbles that streamed from his mouth. He was fitted with goggles that corrected the visual distortion caused by the fluid and his curved glass window on the world. He was fed through an IV tube connected to his wrist and linked to a plastic pouch of nutrients.

  It was decided that Simon best be returned to normal life and treated as a recognizable human being. He was sent back to Glenda Middle School. Aside from his mechanical aides, Simon looked and dressed exactly like his classmates.

  Ironically, being confined in a container worked better than a membership in The Assassins to ensure his popularity. Instead of being tabbed a nerd, Simon Apple became as big a celebrity as he’d been in the days of Hercumite . It was ironic that after being unfairly treated as an Outsider, Simon, now literally beyond the pale, became an Insider; he enjoyed new status and an improved vision of himself as the center of attention.

  Most of his peers were shy of close contact and stayed at arms length but their interest was evident. The less timid regularly tapped his bottle and gave him a thumbs-up. Even Polly Moon stroked his jar when they met. He was famous.

  Albert Essman kept his distance, along with the other Assassins. They respected Simon for keeping quiet about the Lombard incident. Give or take a few inconveniences, life was good.

  Inevitably, after a few glorious months, Simon’s notoriety faded. The go-with-the-flow jokes stopped. He became just another kid with a bottle on his head. It was this return to anonymity that forced him to face the awful reality that he was trapped, doomed by circumstance to survive inside the same kind of oversized jug as the ones used in the school’s water fountains. The hopeless faces of a cadre of doctors who examined him enforced his growing depression. He was not optimistic about the future.

  One evening, Rowena Trask came to the house for dinner. After coffee, she and Robert J. held hands and announced they were engaged to be married. Simon watched his father slip a diamond ring onto Rowena’s finger.

  He blanched. Since his illness Simon had been getting along very well with Robert J.; opening the door to an intruder was no thrill. Aside from being forced to share his father’s affection, the idea of having Rowena Trask for a stepmother made Simon queasy. He’d had his first wet dreams about that woman. Now the flesh and blood version would be running around his house in a see-through nightgown or less.

  When Robert J. and Rowena asked Simon for his blessing, he granted it through a gush of bubbles that made him seem carbonated.

  The couple tied the knot in the garden behind Dr. Fikel’s house. It was a simple wedding, no frills beyond flowers, canapés, drinks, and a flutist playing Vivaldi. The guests were limited to a few relatives and close friends.

  When the ceremony ended, the flutist left and Frank Sinatra records were piped through a speaker. Simon stood by, accepting but sullen. Dr. Fikel said it wouldn’t hurt to drip some Cliquot into him. The infusion of champagne helped. Simon felt light-headed, even buoyant.

  When Sinatra sang “My Way,” Honey Fikel forced Simon to dance with her. They danced over grass while everybody a
pplauded as if they were watching Fred and Ginger. Honey threw out her arms and twirled. While she spun away, Simon heard somebody’s cousin whisper, “It won’t be easy what with the boy around the house. I don’t envy them.” That remark ended the festivities for him.

  Simon left Honey Fikel spinning, scooped up a plateful of chopped liver and took it down to the Lombard theater. Crazy Henry wasn’t home so he stuffed it into the box office porthole.

  When a blissful Mr. and Mrs. Apple came home they found Simon half-hidden behind an ivy vine in their yard. It was then that Robert J. and Rowena announced that he was going along on their Florida honeymoon. Simon refused at first but they hugged him and showed him his ticket.

  The three clung together crying.

  27

  Arrangements were made for Simon to carry his homework to the Sunshine State along with a supply of the more exotic spare parts and batteries for his respirator. The Apples flew first to Miami, then drove to Sonesta Beach, a resort made famous because President Richard Millhouse Nixon went there to escape pressures of the oval office. Robert J. pointed out Nixon’s lush retreat, only a few miles from the Sonesta Beach Hotel where the Apples had reserved a suite fit for newlyweds and, for Simon, a separate room on a lower floor with an ocean view.

  The weather was excellent but Robert J. and Rowena spent most of their time in their suite while Simon lounged around the pool feeling sorry for himself. He had nothing to do but imagine what the bride and groom were doing upstairs. His imaginings left him with impossibly ambivalent feelings. To keep his mind from bad thoughts, he stared at a line of palm trees, hoping for coconuts to bomb oiled senior citizens sipping tall drinks crowned with paper umbrellas. The pool was the epicenter of activity; nobody risked the ocean because the week before a shark ate a German tourist off Boca Raton, too close for comfort.

  Things got livelier when a convention of NASA scientists from Houston and Cape Kennedy arrived to discuss the future of space exploration. During the mornings they met at a planetarium down the road. Simon wondered why anybody would build a planetarium at sea level, about as far from the stars as you could get, but there it was, complete with an observatory. An impressive telescope peered at the heavens from a polished metallic dome. Simon guessed the scope was for tourists to watch Atlas rockets launch toward the moon. Afternoons, the conventioneers sat around in small clots studying maps and star charts, jotting notes on yellow pads, downing drinks without umbrellas. A few of the braver scientists dared shark odds, venturing into the surf to get bounced around by blue waves.